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Charlize Theron Spy Thriller Coldest City Gets a 2017 Release Date

Charlize Theron is no stranger to action/thriller fare, having starred in such movies as The Italian Job and Æon Flux since back in the early 2000s. However, more recently the Oscar-winner has begun to evolve into a bonafide action star in her own right; following her acclaimed turn as Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, Theron is now playing the villainous Cipher in the upcoming Fast & Furious 8 and has lined up project such as the CIA thriller The Gray Man from director Christopher McQuarrie (Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation) as well as the Cold War-era spy thriller The Coldest City.

Coldest City is a film adaptation of the 2012 graphic novel written by Antony Johnston (Daredevil: Shadowland) and illustrated by Sam Hart (Outlaw: The Legend of Robin Hood). 300/300: Rise of an Empire and Act of Valor screenwriter Kurt Johnstad adapted the comic book for the big screen, with Theron starring opposite James McAvoy and working alongside director David Leitch: the producer (and uncredited co-director) of John Wick, as well as a longtime stunt coordinator/supervisor and second unit director on such recent blockbusters as Jurassic World and Captain America: Civil War.

Coldest City set photos - showing Theron wearing a wig and dressed for colder temperatures alongside numerous extras - emerged online earlier this year. Focus Features has now officially scheduled the movie for an August 11th, 2017 theatrical release date.

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This means tthe Theron-led historical action/thriller will face off against Warner Bros. Pictures' CHiPs movie reboot (starring Michael Peña and Dax Shepard) as well as Sony Pictures Entertainment's animated The Emoji Movie during its opening weekend. Ridley Scott's Alien prequel (or, if you would prefer, Prometheus sequel) Alien: Covenant will have been playing in theaters for a week before Coldest City arrives on the scene, but there's not so much overlap between the target demographics for those films to suggest they cannot coexist in peace.

Here is the synopsis for the original Coldest City graphic novel (as listed on Amazon):

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November 1989. Communism is collapsing, and soon the Berlin Wall will come down with it. But before that happens there is one last bit of cloak & dagger to attend to. Two weeks ago, an undercover MI6 officer was killed in Berlin. He was carrying information from a source in the East — a list that allegedly contains the name of every espionage agent working in Berlin, on all sides. No list was found on his body. Now Lorraine Broughton, an experienced spy with no pre-existing ties to Berlin, has been sent into this powderkeg of social unrest, counter-espionage, defections gone bad and secret assassinations to bring back the list and save the lives of the British agents whose identities reside on it.

Theron is playing the spy Lorraine Broughton in the Coldest City film adaptation, while McAvoy is playing David Percival: MI6's Berlin station chief, who must strike an alliance with Lorraine in order to work together and recover the stolen list of MI6's undercover agents in Berlin. The Coldest City movie supporting cast includes such names as John Goodman (10 Cloverfield Lane), Eddie Marsan (Ray Donovan), and Sofia Boutella (Kingsman: The Secret Service), in addition to Toby Jones (Captain America: The First Avenger).

The combination of Theron and McAvoy onscreen and Leitch working behind the camera as the film's director bodes well for Coldest City, while its August release date ought to give the movie enough breathing room to find an audience in the summertime. Indeed, similar to John Wick, Coldest City is the sort of under-the-radar genre movie (produced on a relatively modest budget) that could earn a cult following of its own, when it arrives on the scene. Between that movie and Fast 8, 2017 is already shaping up to be a good year for Theron's standing as a full-blown action movie star, too.